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Friday, February 19, 2010

TBB Stream of Consciousness

February is slowly drawing to a close and spring is almost upon us. Ah. Spring. Freshly mowed green grass. The warmth of golden sunshine. Vibrant flowers peak through the remnants of melting snow. The comforting fragrance of pine tar, rosin bags, and hot dogs. What? These are not the typical scents that remind you of spring? They are for us. Pitchers and catchers have reported for duty this week, bringing us mere weeks closer to our first spring training games. Beyond spring training looms the regular season and just thinking about April 4th sends chills up our spines.

Last week, we discussed the ensuing fight to play first for the New York Mets. Both Daniel Murphy and Mike Jacobs have arrived at spring training to contend for the position previously dominated by Carlos Delgado. In light of this, we asked you which “team” you preferred to play for. Are you Pro-Murphy or Pro-Jacobs? For the first time in TBB history, no one voted for our joke choice: Team Edward. We suspect that it’s because you had no idea what we were talking about, which is just fine by us. That being said, of 7 votes, 5 of you are apparently on Team Murphy whereas 2 of you are all about Team Jacobs.

As previously mentioned, pitchers and catchers reported to sunny, warm Florida and Arizona for spring training this week. Fans had the pleasure of spotting the likes of Phil Hughes, Javy Vazquez, and Johan Santana as they arrived to camp. One fine day, we’ll make it there, but right now we’ve got enough on our hands touring regular season MLB stadiums and planning a future trip to Cooperstown. The players we know and love (and dream of molesting) will probably be inducted into the Hall of Fame by that time (with the exception of Mike Jacobs, who doesn’t play enough to garner Hall of Fame honors).

On the subject of regular season stadiums, just when the hell are single game tickets going on sale? We’d rather not buy a 5-pack for the Angels just for one lousy game. Our entire stadium trip out west is on hold thanks to the NTAC’s (meaning the Angels, Dodgers, and Padres) withholding ticket information. The only clues we’ve been given thus far are from the Dodger’s website. Apparently they’re conducting a single-game “pre-sale” for select customers on March 1st and 2nd. So…if the pre-sale is March 1st and 2nd, we can only assume that the rest of the general public will be able to buy tickets shortly thereafter. However, we don’t know for sure because no one’s announced their sale dates yet. We find this a bit mind boggling. We can’t book our hotel in San Diego until we know which Padres/Giants game we’re attending and we can’t book airfare until we find out which Angels/Athletics game we’re attending. Argh! So help us, if we have to wait so long for tickets to go on sale that the price of airfare goes through the roof, we’re gonna cut someone. And it will probably be the rally monkey. In the meantime, we feel like our LA/San Diego trip is a figment of our imagination because we haven’t paid for anything yet. Curse you, MLB businessmen! Damn you straight to hell!

In St. Jude’s Ab Challenge news, Serena has crunched her endurance to 40 minutes all while watching the Winchester boys battle the forces of evil on Supernatural (just once, can Dean Winchester go full frontal? Just once? Please?), while Lisa’s Mortal Kombat playing has reached epic proportions. Just last night alone she, as Scorpion, defeated her enemies for 10 straight hours (without bathroom breaks). Her thumbs are just about ready for crunch counting.

Johnny Damon is still unemployed, which brings Serena an immense amount of joy to her otherwise abysmal life. Johnny, just so you’re aware, the Party City in New Hyde Park (where we take all of our awesome pictures) is hiring. Maybe Scott Boras can negotiate you some kick ass health benefits. Apparently the Tigers have offered him terms, but we’re pretty sure that the Party City gig is way better. Think of all the party favors he can play with.

Lastly, Lisa was offered $10 for her Keith Hernandez mustache that she wore for our blog, “Mustaches & the 2009 Post Season.” Granted, the mustache was actually a hippie handlebar one rather than an authentic Keith one, but who cares? Lisa gladly gave it up and proceeds went to Fred K’s Cancer. We hope the mustache makes that person as happy as it made us on that fine hairy day.

As usual, it’s time for our baseball notes: Chien-Ming Wang and the Nationals have reached a 1 year agreement worth $2 million. The Nationals will supposedly announce this deal during a news conference today at spring training. So far at blogging time, we’ve heard no such announcement. At long last, “Tiny” Tim Lincecum and the Giants finalized their $23 million/2 year contract on Wednesday, avoiding salary arbitration. At post time, we are exactly 11 days until the Mets first spring training game and 12 days until the Yankees spring training game. It’s so close, we can practically taste the sausage sandwich.

Carly Simon sums up today’s post best. We shall sing it you off key: “This blog’s so lame, you probably think this blog is about you? This blog’s so lame! You probably think this blog is about you, don’t you? Don’t you? Don’t you now? But it’s not. It’s about nothing, not even baseball.”